Flames over France

by Robert Jackson

  “Perhaps they’re going to give us all some leave,” grinned a nearby pilot, who had overheard. “Give us a chance to dip our wicks, one last time, before — ” He made a cutting motion across his throat with the edge of his hand. Villeneuve ignored him, being preoccupied with the orders he had just received. At length, he said:

  “We shall know soon enough. In the meantime, get some sleep. We shall all need to be up before dawn.” He glanced towards the north-east, where the rumble of artillery fire could be heard. “Closer,” he murmured to himself. “Always closer. God knows, sleep may be hard enough to come by.”

  Armstrong slept, undisturbed by the noise of the guns, but he awoke feeling far from refreshed. He knew that he must have been dreaming again, although he could not recall what the dream might have been. He had experienced a recurring dream during the past two or three nights, an odd dream in which he had been imprisoned in a small room, struggling to get to the chink of light that revealed some sort of entrance, but prevented from doing so by mounds of jigsaw puzzles, broken up into their component pieces and piled in his path like miniature mountains. Most tired pilots who had been in action, he knew, dreamed about combat, of being chased by dogged enemy fighters or of being trapped in burning aircraft. Not him; he dreamed about bloody jigsaw puzzles. Perhaps he was going round the bend.

  Shaking his head, he crawled out of his one-man tent stark naked. Some of the Frenchmen, he knew, had taken to sleeping in their clothes in case they had to make a hurried departure, but Armstrong refused to follow their example. He felt scruffy enough as it was, with yesterday’s sweat and grime dried upon his skin.

  The morning air was cool, with just enough chill in it to clutch at the back of his throat as he took his first deep breath. He blinked against the red, molten ball of the sun, its upper rim just beginning to poke over the horizon. There were tendrils of haze across it, but whether they were caused by drifting smoke or the natural mists of early morning he had no means of telling. He stood there for a few moments, inhaling to clear his head. He would have liked nothing more than to go for a short run — his morning habit for years now — but he knew that there would be no time. Instead, he dived briefly back into his tent and re-emerged clutching his razor — still the same one that had been given to him by Madame Bessodes an eternity ago — a grimy towel and a cake of soap.

  There was a water-filled trough at some distance from his tent, and he was glad to see that he was the first there; no soapy scum was floating on the surface. Bending down, he splashed freezing water over his head, leaving his face wet, and rubbed the cake of soap around his jawline. Then he dipped his shaving brush into the water and set about trying to work up some sort of lather, a task accompanied by only partial success. This was one morning ritual that caused great amusement among his French colleagues, most of whom had not shaved for days. It didn’t seem to have affected their performance in action. Armstrong shaved carefully, allowing an interval of a minute or two before putting the razor to his face. He had found by accident that if you left your face wet for a while, shaving with cold water presented no problems — why, he had no idea. But when he had finished his face was smooth and unnicked, and he felt a lot better as he dried himself down after washing all over.

  Within minutes the other pilots were up and about, breakfasting on bread, sausage and steaming black coffee while the mechanics tested the engines of the Hawks. The valiant ground crews had worked all night to make the aircraft serviceable, repairing battle damage, and must have been fit to drop. Armstrong noticed that everyone glanced surreptitiously at the eastern sky from time to time, as though expecting an enemy air attack to materialise at any moment. He reflected that they had been lucky so far. The luck could not possibly last.

  The flight to Paris took only a few minutes, the eight Hawks landing on schedule at Le Bourget. Colonel Villeneuve discovered to his delight that he and Commandant Daurat were indeed old acquaintances, and that Daurat was commander of the French GHQ Transport Flight. Villeneuve asked him what the score was, and was amazed when the other spread his hands wide in perplexity.

  “I have no idea, mon Colonel,” he said apologetically. “I know only that I had a telephone call from a GHQ staff officer yesterday evening, who told me to prepare a fast bomber for a vital mission this morning and to provide a fighter escort. Yours was the Groupe best placed for that task. The problem, as I quickly discovered, was that no bomber was available. At length, in desperation, I telephoned a friend at the Air Force test centre at Saint-Inglevert and he asked the CO there if a machine could be spared. There was only one, an Amiot 354.”

  This, Villeneuve was aware, was France’s finest and fastest bomber. It had not yet entered service and was still undergoing its trials. For the test centre to spare it, something really important must be in the wind.

  At that moment, a messenger roared up on a motorcycle and addressed Daurat. A general had arrived on the airfield; he was waiting in Daurat’s office and was not, it seemed, in a particularly pleasant mood. Daurat jumped on the pillion and sped away towards the operations room; Villeneuve and his pilots stayed where they were, wondering what was going to happen next.

  While they waited, they watched with interest as a brand new Amiot 354 landed and taxied in. It parked close to the fighters, the polished metal of its wings and fuselage contrasting sharply with the drab camouflage of the other aircraft. Three crew members climbed from the Amiot, and the pilot came over to introduce himself to Villeneuve. His name was Capitaine Henri Lafitte, and he was a test pilot. Like Villeneuve, he was completely in the dark about the true nature of the mission.

  “It must be something important, though,” he said. “We’ve been armed, especially for the occasion.”

  Villeneuve glanced at the bomber, and saw twin machine-guns protruding from the rear turret. He also saw that Lafitte was grinning, and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “They’re wooden dummies,” Lafitte told him. “They look realistic enough, but I don’t suppose for a moment that they would fool the Boches.”

  Their attention was diverted by the approach of a staff car. It halted a few yards away; Daurat got out and opened the rear door. Villeneuve brought his pilots quickly to attention as he spotted the gold braid of a general’s kepi. A moment later he let out a gasp as he recognised the occupant. Armstrong glanced sideways at him. “It’s Weygand,” Villeneuve murmured. The name meant nothing to the Englishman; but it was a name that would become very familiar to the Allies in the days to come. General Maxime Weygand, Commander-in-Chief of all French forces on land, at sea and in the air.

  Weygand. Despite his seventy-three years, he bore himself with pride and youthful vigour. His cheeks were hollow, but his eyes were bright and piercing, his mouth set in a firm line. He might have been one of Napoleon’s generals, stepping from a page of history when all Europe lay at France’s feet, instead of an old man summoned from across the sea in a desperate bid to rally the tottering French armies and exhort them to stand firm against the Panzers that were debouching across the plains of Flanders. This was the man who, nearly a quarter of a century earlier, had been the shadow of the great Marshal Foch; it was Weygand who had been at Foch’s right hand on that fateful day in November 1918, when the Armistice terms had been presented to the defeated Germans in the Marshal’s special train at Compiegne.

  His critics — and there had been many — had often cast doubt on his powers of leadership, drawing strength from the fact that he had never commanded troops in battle. In 1920 he had been sent to Poland as France’s representative on an Allied mission whose task had been to advise the Poles in their fight against the invading Russians, and there were those who claimed that he had been the mastermind behind the Polish success. Two years after his return to France he had been appointed high commissioner to Syria, and in 1931 he had been elevated to the post of Commander-in-Chief, French Army.

  In 1939, after four years of retirement, he had been recalled to the colours and sent
back to Syria as military commander. He was still there on 10 May 1940, when the Germans launched their offensive against France and the Low Countries. On the eighteenth he had been in Cairo, conferring with General Wavell, the British commander in Egypt, when an urgent signal arrived from French Premier Paul Reynaud summoning him to Paris.

  He left immediately, hoping that the aircraft would reach Paris that same evening after refuelling at Tunis. The machine, however, encountered strong headwinds and the pilot was forced to turn back and refuel at Mersa Matruh in Egypt, losing three precious hours. His homecoming seemed to be dogged by misfortune; when the aircraft finally touched down in France on the morning of the nineteenth, at Etampes airfield, its undercarriage collapsed and Weygand had to scramble clear through a gun turret, shaken but otherwise unhurt.

  He arrived at Vincennes, the French GHQ, at 1530 that same day, and had an interview with the Commander-in-Chief, General Maurice Gamelin — the unhappy man who was about to be made the scapegoat for the series of military disasters that had overwhelmed the French armies in the field during the past week. It was only then, in the course of Gamelin’s briefing, that Weygand had begun to appreciate the full magnitude of these disasters and the dire peril that confronted his nation.

  That evening, Weygand had a meeting with Paul Reynaud and Marshal Philippe Petain, who at Reynaud’s invitation had joined the government as deputy premier twenty-four hours earlier. After some preliminary discussion, Reynaud asked Weygand to take over the reins from Gamelin. After pondering for a while, the ageing general said:

  “Very well. I accept the responsibility you are placing on me. You will not be surprised if I do not promise victory, or even give you hope of a victory.” On this far from optimistic note, he retired for his first real sleep since leaving North Africa.

  He was back in the C-in-C’s office at Vincennes early the next morning, looking much refreshed. There was a brief, cool meeting with Gamelin, during which the latter formally handed over to his replacement. Afterwards Gamelin left Vincennes for ever, a solitary and pathetic figure, bidding goodbye to no one.

  Weygand knew that his first task must be to confer with all the Allied commanders and work out a speedy and co-ordinated plan of action. He believed, rightly, that the Allied forces north of the corridor that was being driven towards the Channel coast by the Panzers were now in a critical position; it was becoming clear that the enemy planned first to eliminate these forces by crushing them between the hammer and anvil of their two Army Groups before swinging south into the heartland of France.

  But Weygand did not really know what was happening to the Allied armies in the north, for all direct communications had been severed by the rapid advance of the enemy, and any news that trickled through to Vincennes came second-hand, via the link with London. Weygand therefore sent urgent signals to King Leopold of the Belgians, to General Billotte, commanding the French First Army Group, and to General Gort, commander of the BEF, requesting a meeting at Ypres on the afternoon of 21 May. His original plan had been to travel to Abbeville by train, and from there to Ypres; but Abbeville was already within sight of Guderian’s armoured spearheads, so the only alternative was to fly to Ypres by means of the fastest available aircraft.

  So Weygand snatched a few hours’ sleep at Vincennes, having finalised the arrangements for the flight north the next morning — or so he thought. Arriving at Le Bourget, he made a brief inspection of the assembled pilots, expressing surprise at finding Armstrong among them and exchanging a few words with him after Villeneuve had explained the reason for the Englishman’s presence. Running through Wegand’s mind was the cornerstone of the plan he had been working on: an armoured attack by the British on the flanks of the German advance at Arras.

  So much, he thought, depended on the British, who had been conducting a magnificent fighting withdrawal back from the river Dyle to set up a new line of defence on the Escaut. There was no rout there, no panic-stricken retreat; only good order and discipline. And yet Weygand knew that many of the British troops were not regular soldiers at all, but part-time territorials … Weygand turned to Lafitte and asked him if all was ready for the forthcoming mission. The pilot of the Amiot bomber looked bewildered.

  “Mon general”, he confessed, “I have no idea what the mission is to be. I have received no orders, other than that I was to report here with all speed.”

  Sudden anger flashed across Weygand’s face. Calming himself with some difficulty, for this state of affairs only served to confirm the confusion that prevailed everywhere, he asked for a map. Somebody produced one, and Weygand held an impromptu briefing, working out the details of the flight with Lafitte and Villeneuve.

  First of all they would set course for Abbeville, following the valley of the Somme, then turn towards Cambrai or Valenciennes. They would then make a reconnaissance of the Lens-Bethune area, landing at Norrent-Fontes airfield to refuel. GHQ had arranged for Weygand to be picked up there and taken by road to Ypres for his meeting with the Allied commanders. Altitude for the flight was to be 2,500 feet, out of range of enemy small-arms fire and below the effective level of most medium and heavy flak. Strict radio silence was to be maintained, unless of course the Amiot and its escorts were attacked.

  Weygand’s Amiot took off at exactly 0900, the eight fighters of the escort slipping protectively into place above it and on either side. The sky was cloudless, with near-perfect visibility.

  Beauvais airfield slid by underneath their wings. Glancing down, Armstrong saw smoke drifting from it, indicating that it had been under recent attack. A couple of minutes later, he spotted three Dornier 17s, escorted by a dozen Me 110s, above and to the right, and turned the safety catch of his guns to ‘fire’ in anticipation of trouble; but the enemy formation maintained a steady course towards the south and was soon lost to sight.

  The town of Poix slipped by on the starboard side, and now the pilots began to see signs of war. The autoroute leading south from the town was jammed solid with vehicles of every description, ranging from heavy lorries to horse-drawn carts; a terror-driven exodus was under way. The scene of confusion fell astern as the aircraft droned over the lush, dark green landscape of the Somme valley. Ahead of them a haze of smoke hung over the horizon; underneath it lay Abbeville, and heavy fighting seemed to be going on around the town. The sight came as an unpleasant shock to the pilots, who had not realised that the Panzers had advanced so far. The roads beneath were once again congested, this time with armour and military transport. The stark black crosses on the roofs and turrets of the vehicles left no doubt as to their identity.

  The aircraft turned north-east towards Arras. Tracer drifted up lazily from a concentration of enemy armour, and a moment later clusters of black puffs burst around the formation as 20-mm mobile flak batteries opened up. Splinters ripped through the Amiot, a few feet from where Weygand was sitting at the navigator’s plotting table, intent on his maps. He did not trouble to raise his head. Lafitte opened the throttles and the bomber surged forward, leaving the danger behind.

  The formation passed to the south of Arras, over more military convoys. Although fires were burning here and there, the town itself seemed quiet and there was no sign of fighting. Cambrai, a few miles further on, presented a different picture. The centre of the town was in flames and fighting appeared to be in progress in the surrounding countryside, although the drifting pall of smoke made it hard to see exactly what was happening. A lot of flak started to come up and the formation turned west, heading for Norrent-Fontes, near the Belgian border.

  The Amiot touched down without incident on Norrent-Fontes airfield while the fighter escort circled watchfully overhead. Then the fighters came in; one’s undercarriage refused to come down and the pilot made a belly landing, climbing unhurt from the cockpit. He would have to continue his journey in the bomber.

  Villeneuve, worried now that his fighters were reduced to seven in number, went over to where Weygand and the bomber crew were standing beside their machi
ne. The general was in a towering rage. GHQ had informed him that an air force group was still based here; it turned out that it had departed three days earlier. Norrent-Fontes’ only inhabitant was a small and incredibly scruffy private, who now stood off to one side looking overawed by the close proximity of so much gold braid. When the group left, he had been told to stay behind and look after the airfield’s fuel dump pending further orders. The orders had not arrived, but he had stolidly remained at his post, not knowing what else to do. Villeneuve accompanied him to the fuel dump; it contained 20,000 litres, stacked in 20-litre drums. The pilots descended on it and were soon hard at work refuelling their machines.

  Meanwhile, Weygand and his aide had set off in search of a telephone, driven by the little soldier in a decrepit truck that was the airfield’s sole remaining mode of transport. All the telephones on the aerodrome were out of action, but they found one in a post office in a nearby village, from where Weygand managed to contact First Army Group. Over a badly distorted line, he learned that General Billotte had sent out cars to search for him. The problem was that no one knew where he might be.

  Back at Norrent-Fontes, the pilots were awaiting Weygand’s return. Suddenly, a car drove up in a cloud of dust and screeched to a halt. A French army officer jumped out. The man seemed panic-stricken.

  “What are you doing here?” he cried. “The Boches are only ten kilometres away, and they’re advancing at sixty kilometres an hour. Get out, while you still can.”

  Villeneuve asked the man if he had seen anything of Weygand. The officer became even more agitated.

  “How am I supposed to recognise anyone in this shambles? If he’s gone towards Hazebrouck he’s been taken prisoner, that’s for sure. Go on, get out! You haven’t much time.”

  The officer ran back to his car and drove off at high speed. The pilots looked at one another, torn by uncertainty. What if Weygand had been taken prisoner, and the Germans were as close as the staff officer had indicated? At any moment the Stukas might appear overhead and blast their aircraft into smoking wreckage.